Numb
by wyverndragon
Summary: A different way of looking at the events of Prague. "You and I are not so different, you know. I am merely a few steps further into the darkness." T for dead people and dark themes. Oneshot.


**AN: HAI! 'Tis me, with another oneshot! (I know what you're thinking. "omfg you're writing _angst?!"_ Yup.)  
Umm, not much to say here, just a few events in Prague, from AOD, looking at Lara's personality a bit differently. A bit dark. Dead people. _I see dead people..._ :P**

**If you're just picking up on of mah lovely stories, there's no more angst to be found from me, only humor, sorry :)  
And the very beginning is the Immortalis take of the scene, redone angst-like (you have no idea what I'm talkin' about. That's okay... Muahaha.)**

**Reviews, hugs and cookies will all be appreciated muchly  
**

* * *

He opens the airlock, and sees her on her knees, slumped to the ground. Gun aimed cautiously at her immobile form, he steps inside, reaching out to touch her shoulder, wondering if she is alright. The second his rough hand brushes her shoulder, she snaps upward, sharp blows hitting his jaw and ribs. His gun is knocked out of his hand, and he finds himself looking down the barrel of her own pistol. He grimaces a bit – she hit hard – and vocalizes his irritation. "Was that really necessary?"

She does not look the least bit sorry. He sees her hand tighten on the trigger and braces himself for the pain, but it never comes. A bullet whistles past his ear, and he turns to see a clawed mutant behind him, arm raised to strike, topple backwards with a bullet between where once had been eyes. It takes him a moment to realize she just saved his life. She appears unfazed; he doubts much fazes her, if anything.

"Thanks…" He trails off. He doesn't know her name, which she supplies without missing a beat.

"Lara. Lara Croft."

"Kurtis Trent."

She extends a hand, and the one holding the guns drops to her side. That she did not holster her weapon does not go unnoticed. He shakes her hand, and is honestly surprised when she makes no move to disarm him. She merely watches with mild interest, even when he stoops to pick up his fallen gun. Her brown eyes divulge nothing that goes on in her head.

"I owe you one."

"You owe me a painting." Her voice is cold and hollow, like her gaze. He finds it unnerving.

"Sorry, that went AWOL at the Louvre."

"Everything seems to these days." He is unsure what to make of her comment, when she pulls the one thing he's been looking for out of her pocket, and flips it around in her hand. A shard, not much bigger than a knife, made of crystal. "You called this a Periapt Shard. What does it do?"

"They're weapons of the Lux Veritatis. All three shards together can kill Eckhardt."

"You mentioned it was yours."

"My father had two of them." He pulls out a shard identical to the one she holds, and she nods sharply.

"The third?"

"Eckhardt keeps it close, I don't know where exactly. His alchemy lab, maybe."

She stares at the shard, contemplative, before shrugging and tossing it to him. "You want to kill Eckhardt, yes?" she says, in response to his questioning look. He nods, but her next question catches him off-guard. "Revenge for your father?"

"Justice!"

She laughs humorlessly. "You may call it that, but vengeance is what you search for."

He looks down at the shard, which she so carelessly tossed to him, and a question rises in his mind. "You trust me?"

She looks honestly amused, and shakes her head, auburn bangs swinging in her face, "Of course not."

"Then why did you give this back me?"

"You can help me, or you can betray me." She pauses, perhaps for effect, as a nearly malevolent grin spreads slowly across her face. "Though betraying me is a very poor life decision. Either way, _I_ lose nothing."

He swallows a lump in his throat. If he didn't know any better, he would have suspected this woman as the Monstrum, without a doubt. She doesn't notice his wary observation of her; instead she has pulled out her map of the Strahov, and is examining it, spinning a lock of hair around a fingertip. He moves to her side to peer over her shoulder, so close that his breath brushes her cheek. If she notices his closeness, she is indifferent, pointing to a section off the main map. "I think that's Eckhardt's lab. Do you know where the last painting is?"

He points to another part, more central. "In the Vault of Trophies. The entrance is here."

She nods sharply, pocketing the map. "You need the shard, you can go after that; I'll find the painting, and destroy it."

He agrees, and they go their separate ways out of the airlock. Before he turns the corner, he hears her call over her shoulder…

"You and I are not so different, you know. I am merely a few steps further into the darkness."

* * *

Eckhardt collapses against the wall, two shards stuck in his midriff, glowing faintly blue. His breathing is sharp and shallow, and he knows his end is near. Lara slips out from behind a column, flipping the last crystalline dagger skillfully across her fingers. She runs toward her adversary, shard raised, and hisses "This is for Von Croy!" before she brings it down. But she cannot pierce her target, for someone grabs her from behind, and pulls her away like she weighs nothing, the shard sliding from her grip and into his. Reflexively, she draws her gun and aims it at her new attacker. Karel.

"Go on, kill her!" Eckhardt mumbles weakly. Karel regards her with interest, but turns, and plunges the dagger into his employer's head. Blue light flashes, and when it clears, the alchemist is most certainly dead. Lara stumbles to her feet, guns still trained on the man before her. Before she can stop herself, a single question tumbles from her lips. "Why?"

He faces her, his ice blue eyes boring into her, and she shudders. It feels as if he can see into her very soul. She continues, attempting to stop the thick silence from suffocating her. "Why? You worked for him."

"Unknowingly, he worked for me. But his usefulness has ended." The man's voice is cold, like hers has been in adventures past. She is mildly surprised, but she does not show it.

"Will you destroy his work?"

"Of course not, the Great Work will be finished. I'm offering you the chance to become part of the benign new order in the world." He smiles, something she suspects is a rare occurrence. But her pride would never let her join him, even if her sense of duty gave out. She would fight these monsters to her grave, long after the outside world gave up on her. "You are kidding, right?"

His face shifted, and his blue eyes and blond hair were replaced with dark pits of emptiness, and white streaks. Skin that was once human became blue-grey and full of scars and markings. "We Nephilim have only been trying to survive." Aside from the slightest widening of brown eyes, nothing betrays her shock at this revelation.

"Too many people have died for me to trust you."

"Unfortunate victims of history. Eckhardt was stupid, and rash in killing them." His form kept shifting, moving through people that she had seen throughout her journey. Bouchard, Luddick, Kurtis. "I've helped you all along, both here and in Paris. You can trust me, Lara Croft."

He had thought he knew how she would react. Anger, sadness, hurt, shock. But what she did surprised even him, who had been among humans for centuries. She laughed. Coldly and bitterly, without the slightest bit of feeling. She laughed in the face of Kurtis Trent, the man who was her ally, and in different circumstances could have been her friend, or perhaps something more.

"You are very naïve, for a being so ancient. I _never_ trusted you." She seems to be talking to Kurtis more than the creature that holds his form. Or perhaps she suspects that her ally never existed at all, but was only a ruse created by the ancient, manipulative being. "You were a gamble I took. I only trust myself, for others are fickle things. You can never tell when they will stab you in the back, or lock you in a tomb."

She begins to pace around the arena, gun in hand, gesturing as she speaks. A faint smile slides onto her face as words that have been bottled for months come spilling forth, the Nephilim in front of her frozen in shock, still in Kurtis's form. "But we are human. We care, it is our nature. Those we care about are torn from us, ripped from our arms. We think we're the lucky ones, the ones who survive, but when we see everything around us crumble, we realize…"

She trails off, and he smiles, thinking he has won. That she will give in, and join him and his order. Become his queen.

"Join me."

"You set Werner free when you killed him. It is the living who are cursed, not the dead."

"Join me."

Her lips curve into a smile, crueler and colder than his own. She finishes in barely a whisper, but he doesn't need to strain to hear her haunted words.

"But I am still living, and there is vengeance to collect."

A bullet pierces his shoulder, and the sudden flash makes him drop the face of her companion, reverting to his original form. She fires again, though she knows it is useless. He leaps into the air, hovering, as green fire spreads across his fingertips. "Stupid mortal, so be it!"

She laughs. By the time all is done, she knows she will be glad to crawl away to die.

* * *

She clutches her stomach, which burns, due to one of the green bolts. Everything hurts, but she is alive. The Strahov shakes, the building's structure severely weakened by the explosion that occurred in its belly. Cold metal squeaks under her booted feet as she walks and stumbles forward, forgetting her pain long enough to take another step. Then another, and another. Lights flicker somewhere ahead, and she wonders where she is in the complex. If she were someone else, she might have thought they were the lights at the end of the tunnel, coming to get her. But she knows that life will not be that merciful, not to her.

She emerges on the balcony of the large arena, and sees the large form of Boaz below, unmoving. Her breath is raspy, she may have cracked a rib or two. Pain shoots up her legs when she drops down; she hisses, but ignores it for now. Two other corpses lay near the massive mutant cadaver, amidst a large pool of blood, partially dried. One, headless, bluish, and winged – she finds the head not far away, coupled with the bladed weapon she had seen in the Louvre. She suspects the creature was also a mutated form of Boaz, perhaps it came out of the larger carcass, like a insect out of a pupa.

Her fingers slip gingerly into the holes in the glaive, half expecting its blades to shoot out, and for it to drag her somewhere. It doesn't, and she admonishes herself for her silliness. The other body catches her eye, and she walks over to it, puddles of blood splashing around her boots. When she sees who it is, she lets out a low sigh. It appears her companion was real after all, and was now lying on his side in a pool of his own blood and gore, a large hole through his gut. His clear blue eyes are open, glazed and lifeless.

She kneels by him, her mouth set in a grim line, a single tear stinging at her eye. No matter how many times she has seen it, it still hurts when she sees a body hit the floor, whether by her hand or an adversary's. She can pretend all she wants, but she is not completely numb. She knows. And she hates it.

She knows he died to avenge his father. He knew he wouldn't make it out of the arena alive, yet he sacrificed himself to save her. She feels uncomfortably indebted to the dead man.

The squeak of metal brings her back to the present, and she realizes she has been there long enough. Standing, she attempts to wipe her bloodstained knees, but only smears the brown streaks. She looks at the golden weapon in her hand, then sets it next to the man before her. Normally she would have taken it, as a memory of another successful venture, but she has no wish to relive the events of Paris or Prague. Wiping her hands, she turns to go, before freezing in place and looking back at the corpse of her former ally. In a whisper that echoes throughout the arena, she says, "You were a good man, Kurtis Trent. Better than most of us," and walks into the dark tunnel before her, conscious clear and goal in mind.

* * *

**One last thing! Elna (Elna11 'round here) is looking for voice actors for her TR Sims movie, and she could use a little help!  
Auditions are at: (youtube) /watch?v=ou7VNw27koI&feature=g-u-u  
**


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